


so you can leave like the sane, abandon me

by izzeDeer



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: ADHD, Anxiety, Gen, Mako had a bad time, Mental Breakdown, Other, bad brain thoughts, don't read this if you're having a bad night okay, imposter syndrome, mental health, self hate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2020-01-12 03:14:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18437867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/izzeDeer/pseuds/izzeDeer
Summary: Strati aren't supposed to have mental health problems.But boy is imposter syndrome a bitch.





	so you can leave like the sane, abandon me

It’s not like Mako’s brain ran at 150 miles an hour all the time.  
It’s that it ran at 150 miles an hour most of the time, and then about 10% of the time it crashed.

Hard.

Strati weren’t technically supposed to have mental health problems, at least, that’s what was always implied at the September Institute. They had to be in control as much as possible. But literally almost every strati at the school was a teenager or a young adult in a pseudo post scarcity society that was anything but. Hyper capitalism? That was probably the term.

Anyway.

Mako did his best the 90% of the time his brain ran on high settings, to seem okay. And it worked! Mostly. Aria would give him looks and ask questions but it was fine, he’d just change the subject. She let him. Sometimes.

This time, Aria wasn’t around. There was no help, no blanket pile, no one to assuage his anxieties that maybe he was useless, maybe he wasn’t needed. He just caused more trouble than he was worth. He wasn’t worth anything except his skills and if his skills didn’t help anything, then he was useless.

God he hated it when his brain got like this. He sat in his closet, one of them at least, this one the hardest one for a normal person to find, fists balled up and pressed against his forehead as he tried to get the bad thoughts to stop. 

He barely even noticed he’d started crying as his head started picking apart his relationship with Aria. Did she even like being his cucumber? Did she even like him? She probably just thought he was sad and was his friend out of pity. God, when she found out that he was a total faker, and not even good at being a strati. 

What about Cass? What about AuDy?

They probably just pitied him. There was no way either of them thought he was good at what he did. Cass yelled at him for getting hurt all the time and AuDy just acted like he was an inconvenience. They’d never like him.

Cass would never like him.

What was there to like?

Round and round his thoughts went, like a cyclone of negativity, building and building in his head. Mako just curled in on himself, a sob wrenching out of him.

And he stayed like that in his weird little closet, sequestered away from the people who could help him, trapped in his own head and spiralling. 

 

After awhile, the crying subsided... The thoughts had run themselves ragged and left him, to come back another time.

And it was quiet. And he was alone.

Mako scrubbed at his face with his sleeves, sniffling loudly. Tried to look presentable. He couldn’t stay in here forever, he’d already been gone too long.

They’d think something was wrong.

And he couldn’t let them think that anything was wrong. He had to be a happy face. He couldn't let them see the mask slip or they'd know he was lying to them. That he wasn't good at what he said he was.

A lie came quick, he’d been napping. That’s why he looked gross. Good, believable.

Easy to fake.

Blanket wrapped around his shoulders, he shuffled to the common area, where Cass was cooking, and Aria was chatting, and AuDy was listening.

Everything was fine.

(Everything was not fine.)

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes you just need to write something that resonates with yourself, and then you hope that it will resonate with other people.
> 
> I might come back to this. Idk. Mako deserves better.
> 
> title is from " The Sharpest Lives" by MCR


End file.
